VIRA: A CIMA Based System for the Operation of Remote Scientific Instruments
Ian Atkinson, Douglas du Boulay, Sándor Brockhauser, Donald F. McMullen, Romain Quilici, Andrew Sharpe, Peter Turner · Computational Methods in Science and Technology · 2009
INTRODUCTIONThe financial, functional and educational returns from investing in the development of remote access services are well known and widely recognised.State of the art high performance laboratory instrumentation, such as high flux X-ray diffraction systems and powerful electron microscopes, is increasingly expensive and too costly to replicate in multiple locations.Not only is there the high initial capital cost, there is the on-going burden of technical staffing and specialised maintenance costs.Remote access services would maximise returns on the high construction and operating costs of landmark national research facilities, such as synchrotrons and neutron sources, as well as more conventional laboratory facilities.A significant disincentive to developing 'custom-built' remote access systems, is that there is a high coding overhead that may well reproduce functionality already provided by an instrument manufacturer.Recognition of this disincentive is reflected, at least in part, in the cur-rent preference for the use of the remote desktop [1-4] approach to providing remote access to instruments at major facilities [5].A significant advantage of the custom built interface approach however, is that the actions of the remote instrument user may be tightly controlled, while at the same time services outside the desktop environment can be provided to offer a richer operating environment.Communication between the user and the facility may be adjusted to suit prevailing bandwidth constraints.Labour invested in constructing a remote access system may be subsequently leveraged if a framework approach is adopted, and used to support modules and plug-ins.The Common Instrument Middleware Architecture [6-9] (CIMA) project is a pioneering NSF Middleware Initiative project to research and define a consistent and re-usable middleware framework to enable and embed instruments as addressable Web and Grid resources.The framework provides a capability for reuse, and plugins provide service specificity.